There are various proposals for tires with high running performance on icy and snowy roads, called studless tires. Studless tires are configured with block patterned tread patterns in order to obtain high performance on snow, with plural sipes formed in the blocks to obtain performance on ice.
Such studless tires include, for example, those disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) Nos. 2006-160158 and 2008-221901.